노조전임자의 급여지급금지 문제

Abstract

Under the art. 81 of Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, payment of wages to full time union officials by employers for the duration of their tenure shall be prohibited. And under the art. 24 paragraph 2 of the same Act, the full time union officials shall not receive any remuneration from their employers. The purpose of these provisions is to maintain and reinforce independence of trade unions from employers. However, these clauses are not in force at present and delayed for more than 12 years, too. They can't take effect until January 1, 2010. The reason of long-delay of enforcement is that the representative model of Korean trade unions is 'company union' and that many of them are not able to obey these rules immediately, as the members are not sufficient to give wages to their union officials. By the way, now-a-days, most of the trade unions, including FKTU(federation of Korean trade unions), criticize these provisions of the Act, on the ground that the State won't recognize collective autonomy of social partners regarding treatment of union officials. Furthermore, the trade unions are eager for revision of the rules before going into effect, as ILO Committee on Freedom of Association has recommended to Korean governmen revision of them. According to Korean Supreme Court, the individual labor relations of full time officials are as follows: they are exempt from duties of performing their own work under the collective agreements or the consents by employers, on condition that they perform duties for a trade union. And judges has decided in many cases that union officials' activities for their trade union were considered as performance for their company, and that they should be compensated by insurance benefits under the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, when they had been injured while doing their union activities. Besides, the judges interpreted that union officials should obey to the rules of employment and that, if not, they could be punished righteously by disciplinary rights of employers. In this study, I'd like to emphasize that the legislators must refer to the cases, where judges have regarded union officials' activities for a trade union in many parts as activities for their company. And I think the State should not prohibit but try to permit the collective agreements, where the social partners consent that the union officials should be given equal treatment in wages to other employees by the employers, when they perform ordinarily activities for the trade union in the company.